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Sequester scare: Obama team drives home message

POLITICO LIVE: Sequester fact check

That’s not to say that anyone thinks the sequester is good policy or that it will be harmless. But the dramatic predictions about long lines at airports and the loss of special education funding involve some large assumptions.

Here is POLITICO’s guide to evaluating the warnings in the White House sequester reports.

They’re never going to fix the sequester?

The state-by-state reports are full of scary numbers about funding cuts for schools, defense, public health, law enforcement and social services — any of which could be true if Congress and Obama fail to act this week, next month — or ever.

So the scenarios described by Obama — “thousands of teachers and educators will be laid off” or “hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose access to primary care and preventive care like flu vaccinations and cancer screenings” — are the worst-case scenario.

Even Washington skeptics expect the sequester to soften eventually, even if the cuts take effect.

On Monday morning, for example, POLITICO Playbook broke news that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner may retroactively give agencies wiggle room in a spending bill due at the end of March, which could make cuts to important programs potentially easier to handle.

So while Obama’s numbers add up under the current stalemate, the picture could improve if a deal is reached — even after the fact.

They really do have some time

Some of the most dire White House predictions are about education funding — like the deep cuts in aid for disadvantaged kids that could hurt 2,700 schools and 1.2 million students. And states could face the loss of federal special-education funding for 7,200 teachers and staff members who teach children with disabilities, according to the reports.

There’s just one thing the White House doesn’t mention: Those cuts wouldn’t actually kick in until the next school year.

That’s because those two programs — Title I aid to disadvantaged students and special-education aid under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — are funded in advance, so they’re already covered for this school year.

As Education Secretary Arne Duncan pointed out in a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this month, “the hardship will be concentrated in the 2013-2014 school year” because of the way the programs are funded.

School districts won’t be able to wait that long to plan for the possible cuts — Duncan’s letter says they’ll have to start making teacher hiring decisions in April and May.

But it does buy Obama and Congress at least a bit of time to negotiate a deal that could prevent the cuts.

A Department of Education official noted that “the forward funding doesn’t mitigate the impact of the sequester cuts, it just delays it on the calendar” — but added that the school districts do need to start planning ahead.

"It just means a lot more children will not get the kinds of services they need, and as many as 40,000 teachers could lose their jobs,” Duncan said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

And there are other education cuts that will kick in sooner. School districts with large numbers of students living on military bases, Indian lands or other federal properties will miss out on their share of the remaining $60 million of “Impact Aid” set to be distributed before the end of the school year. The cuts, Duncan said, could force districts to make “wrenching, mid-year adjustments,” pushing staff out of jobs and delaying badly needed building maintenance.